Excerpt from Billiards Simplified, or How to Make Breaks: Illustrated by Sixty-Eight Diagrams of the Actual Play of Cook, Bennett, Roberts, Peall, Mitchell, and Taylor WE think we may fairly claim for billiards a high position as a national pastime. That it is a national pastime we have no hesitation in asserting, honoured as it has been by the presence of Royalty, and graced with the smiles of the fairest and noblest in the land. Nor do we think we shall prove wrong if we predict for it a permanent existence as a national institution. For it has an advantage which we Englishmen cannot afford to despise. It is independent of those vicissitudes of the weather which so often spoil our cricket matches and other sports. In this variable climate it is no small gain to possess a pastime which may be called weather proof and perennial - a pastime that combines the advantages of both chess and cricket; provides at once the intellectual entertainment of the one, and the physical exercise of the other; and these inde pendently of the caprices of the weather or the changes of the season. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.